


every day patches the night up

by silklace



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boss/Employee Relationship, Daddy Kink, Just the Tip, M/M, Mostly Unresolved Emotional Tension, Secret Relationship, Slurs, Spanking, Wet & Messy, spitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 13:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silklace/pseuds/silklace
Summary: His phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out.Are you awake?





	every day patches the night up

**Author's Note:**

> well, lads, here we are. *pinches the bridge of my nose*
> 
> apologies to Frank Ocean for the title
> 
> for visual learners, please refer to [this picture of LMM](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/linmanuel-miranda-lonny-price-attending-the-reception-for-merrily-we-picture-id525138202) to get an idea of what this Hamilton's look/vibe/deal is!

The freezer clicks over with a hum as he swings it open; a waft of cool air breathes an escaping sigh. “Shit,” he mutters, and lets the bottle of Tanqueray, wedged under a rime of frost, lay forgotten again, the sudden balm of the icy air surprising in its relief. His t-shirt is sticking to his back. 

Briefly, he works his jaw around the ache blooming in his cheekbone and tentatively lets his stinging face rest against the chill of the freezer door, which is probably disgusting. He’s sweating everywhere; he can feel a bead of it winding its way down his temple. If he’s lucky he won’t get blood on the freezer but he hasn’t checked how bad his face is, not yet. 

The Tanqueray, he decides, can wait; the clock on his microwave hasn’t been set right since the power went out last week but he knows vaguely that he has to be up and decently presentable in five hours. 

He stays for a moment longer, faced wedged into the freezer, trying not to think, though it’s not something he really ever got the hang of. He can remember being a kid and asking his mom, as she chopped onions and tomatoes at the countertop or ran her fingers under the water to test his bath – _what’re you thinking about?_

It seemed impossible to him at the time that he couldn’t know what she – the most important person in his world – was thinking, always and at whatever moment. What did she think about when she brushed his teeth for him in the mirror before bedtime or when she said, “Mijo, should we have chocolate for dinner?” because it made him cackle back, “No, silly mamá,” or when she ran her fingernails against his forehead at night and sang made up songs to him about a very brave and very smart boy who lived on a boat and sailed to distant lands. 

He’d gotten better at it but as a kid it used to drive him crazy. How could he live with not knowing? 

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out. 

_Are you awake?_

He snorts at the predictability. The blue light from a neighbor’s television flickers in the otherwise dark kitchen. 

_You offering to tuck me in if I’m not?_

He sends it before he can decide not to. “Fuck it,” he mutters, and tips the freezer door closed to go inspect his face in the cracked bathroom mirror. The size of his apartment being what it is, it takes about four strides from fridge to toilet if he’s counting. He prefers not to. 

His phone buzzes again as he’s inspecting the patch of road rash on his jaw, the fledgling stain of a bruise on his cheekbone; by tomorrow, it’ll be the same color as the purple half-moons under his eyes. In the close space of the bathroom, he can smell the tequila on his breath. He almost rears back from his reflection, eyes red-rimmed, mouth bitten from where he’d kept sucking on his lips to so that he wouldn’t cry on the long walk home. Instead he grips the edge of the sink until the urge to puke or hit something goes away. 

Well, that clarifies that.

He’ll deal with the retributions for his face tomorrow, in the morning, when hopefully he’ll have witnesses around. It’ll be more – straightforward, that way. 

He grabs his phone to respond again, but a second message buzzes in before he’s replied to the first. 

_Not really, no._

_But I think you already knew that._

A hot noise lodges itself behind his teeth. “Jesus, cool your jets, big guy,” he mutters, and taps out: _I’m already in bed. Freshly milked from jerking off in the shower, to be honest._ He sends the muscle, eggplant, and water droplet emojis as well, just to be annoying. 

He watches his phone as the typing indicator lights up. Then disappears. Then lights up again. “Pathetic,” he mutters. Vaguely, he wonders if he wants Alex to tell him about it or something, how he turned the water hot enough to pink up his skin; how he slicked his fingers with cheap conditioner and fucked himself on them, wishing it was a fat cock instead; how he muffled his cries in the small shower stall against the hinge of his arm and came hard enough to streak the tile. 

A stupid, pretty story. The water in his shower has never inched above lukewarm in the 18 months he’s lived there and his wrist hurts too much to jerk off, anyways. 

His phone stays silent for a long time after that; long enough that he’s already tipped himself into bed, let the whir of the cranky old fan run its cool fingers along his bare chest; plugged his phone in and double checked the alarm; run his mouth under the faucet until the dry, tacky feeling had mostly gone away; and is halfway towards sleep when he gets a message that, sleep-tumbled, he flips open to read in the deep, dark, soft space between sleep and waking. 

_Goodnight, Alexander._

In the morning, he thinks he dreamed it. 

“Oh, the General is going to love that.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Don’t call him that.” He shuffles his hold on the tray of coffees, the take out box with an egg white spinach omelet and coconut quinoa inside, and, of course, the requisite hanger of dry cleaning into one arm so that he can punch the elevator number. 

Angelica ignores his tone. “Did you even sleep last night?”

He smiles. His teeth show. Angelica snorts. 

“You’re so predictable,” she says, not ungently. 

“I know.” He looks away, feeling stupid. The doors slide open for their floor. “This one’s for you,” he says, “by the way,” and hands her a tall and expensive latte from the café down the road as they exit the elevator. 

“I didn’t put an order in,” she says, then with less confusion and more steel, “Benedict 'forgot,'” she says, raising quotation fingers, “again. Funny how he only forgets me and Eliza, isn’t it.”

“I know,” he says, again, pushing forward down the hallway. He calls over his shoulder, “I don’t forget, though.”

He skirts down to the Executive suite, passing smaller offices and the layout of cubicles, his shoes clicking neatly on the expensive marble tile, and he doesn’t knock before entering. 

George looks up from where one of Lafayette’s long fingers is pointing at something on an Ipad screen. There’s only the briefest of hesitations as he takes in the bruising and scratches on his face, but his expression remains impassive. “Alexander.”

“Sir,” he says, nodding. He drops coffees in front of each of them; wordlessly offers the breakfast to George, who declines it; stows the takeaway box in the fridge instead; adjusts the Smart-tint on the floor-to-ceiling wall of window to arrest the glare that’s creeping its way towards George’s desk and causing the minutest of squints around his eyes; and hangs his dry cleaning up in the corner closet, wrought from mahogany and that opens at the lightest touch of his fingers on the catch and that exists, as far as Alex can tell, for the sole purpose of housing the occasional hanger of two of dry cleaning. 

Then he goes and sits at his desk outside and tries to ignore the pounding in his heart. 

By the time George corners him, he’s had time to perfect his story, first in his head and then to the long stream of appointments who had either brazenly asked about his face or politely averted their eyes. Like any good story, it’s mostly true. 

“Lafayette tells me you were in an accident.” 

He hears the lock on the door click closed and rolls his eyes, drying his hands on an Egyptian cotton hand towel and dropping it into the neatly covered linen basket. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“I haven’t had the opportunity,” George says, crossing his arms across his broad chest and leaning back against the sleek mahogany door, which makes Alex’s gut give a hot turn of arousal, “to be dramatic, as you have apparently seen fit to tell your story to everyone except me.”

A noise of annoyance escapes from between his teeth and he looks away from George’s gaze in the mirror, down at his hands, instead. “I didn’t tell everyone, Jesus. Some people asked. Some people cared to ask.” He locks his jaw on the rest of the sentence. 

There’s a pregnant pause of irritation and then George says, casually, “The problem with you, Alexander, is that you think -” 

Alex cuts him off with a laugh that sounds more like a snarl. “Oh, is this the part where you offer constructive criticism for my benefit? I think not.” He whirls around. His jaw aches like a hot pulse. “This is why I didn’t tell you,” he says, and realizes his voice has gone into a hiss before he can stop himself, “This is why it would have been so much easier if you had just – fucking –”

“Language,” George says, curtly. 

“Jesus Christ, if you had just _fricking_,” he corrects, stupidly, “asked this morning, at a normal time, when you first saw me, and then Lafayette and Tilghman could have taken taken it through the routine office gossip rumor mill, but no, you have to make it complicated. And weird. And – fucking - _inane_.”

“I was -,” George pauses, considering his words and adjusting the cross of his arms, as if a struck by a sudden discomfort, “caught off guard.”

“You were not,” Alex spits disbelievingly. The first time they’d fucked, Alex’d had a fat lip from where he’d gotten himself slapped in the mouth the night before, probably for reasons justified and that he can’t remember now, but what he does remember is the way George had taken his lip between his teeth over and over again until he was sobbing and they’d had blood on both their mouths. 

George takes a step towards him. Alex watches his eyes track the bruise, the patch of battered skin on his jaw. He takes another step forward and Alex releases a breath between his teeth. 

“You must be in pain,” he says finally, eyes too knowing. 

“I’ll live.”

“Let me look at you,” he says, and Alex knows an order when he hears one. 

“Alright,” he says, shrugging and without examining why he cares to give permission to someone who isn’t asking for it, and hoists himself up on the sink, lifting his chin and parting his knees as if to say that this is what he’d been waiting for since George cornered him in here in the first place and they both know it. 

“An accident? On your bike?” He tips Alex’s chin up. His hands are warm. There’s a callous on his index finger. 

“Yeah,” Alex admits, finally. The fact that he’d been drinking more than usual is irrelevant, as far as he can tell. 

George slots in between his knees; there’s a shard of space, barely, between the places where their legs could be touching. He’s wearing a suit that George bought him, and he smells like the cologne George bought him, and the only thing he’s eaten today is a bagel that he bought for himself with George’s credit card. He hooks his ankle around the back of George’s leg. 

George’s breath stutters a little, but when he speaks his voice is very even. “I sent you home last night.”

Alex sighs, leaning into the warm cup of George’s hand. “You did.”

“You didn’t go home.”

“I went to a bar.” 

Alex sucks his teeth in the silence that follows. “You know I don’t actually work that hard to piss you off? Shit, it’s just so easy, big guy.”

George’s hand tightens, just enough for the bruise to flare hot under his thumbprint. Alex can feel his lip curling into a sneer. He wishes George would wipe it off his face. 

“You went to a bar,” George repeats. 

“I wasn’t tired. You sent me home.” He shrugs, as if that explains it all. 

George looks at him. “You’d fallen asleep at your desk.”

Alex snorts and turns his face into George’s palm, kisses the hot skin he finds there before taking the meat of his palm between his teeth. George sighs. His other hand lands on Alex’s thigh, too high up to be anything other than what it is.

“Yeah,” Alex agrees, “and then you berated me for 30 minutes. Woke me right up, funnily enough.” 

Lafayette and Tilghman and fucking Greene had been in the room the whole time, and Alex had known he was dully pink from forehead to throat about it, even though he hadn’t actually cared – it wasn’t the first time George had blown steam off at him that way, though Alex preferred when it involved him getting fucked over the edge of George’s desk, ass pink from the sharp, hard smacks George bestowed on him when he was pissed about the general ineptitude of everyone but his smallest and closest staff or had spent too many nights on the low couch in his office, overworked and burned out and utterly deprived of any kind of pleasure until Alex gave it to him. 

“Were you angry with me, son?” 

Alex’s eyes flash. He bats George’s hand away and hooks him closer with his foot, rolling his hips out. “Don’t call me that.”

George ignores him in favor of hefting him up by his thighs and twisting to slam him against the wall where he can roll his hips into him, hard, the full length of his dick pressing between Alex’s legs. 

“Aw, fuck,” Alex breathes, locking his legs around George’s hips, the air punched out of him. “You really gonna fuck your secretary in the executive suite restroom? Like some shitty porno?” He rolls his hips back in answering thrust and grins, pulse kicking up from all the attention, from the broad span of George’s hands on his hips and ass holding him up. “I could wear a skirt next time if you want, we can really get into it.”

George reaches up with one hand and covers his mouth. It fucking _hurts_, the bruise on his jaw flaring white hot. “Do you ever shut up?”

Alex whines. He doesn’t. He doesn’t fucking know _how_ to.

“I’m not going to fuck my secretary in the bathroom at work,” George says, in a measured, explanatory voice. 

“You could,” Alex says, reflexively, twisting his head to grit the words out, locking his knees around George’s hips and trying to use the leverage to thrust against him again, get his cock to drag between his legs and against his belly like he does when they’re in bed together, Alex’s knees knocked wide while George measures the depth of his fuck – _this is how much space I’m going to take up inside of you_ \- against the bowl of Alex’s hips and groin. “Bend me over the sink, it’s just you and me in here isn’t it, no one else would come in, you could take your time giving it to me, make me -”

“Be quiet, Alexander.” George’s voice is a low rumble, his dark eyes darkening. 

He looks for a long time at Alex, still holding him steady, not even trembling under Alex’s weight and he probably doesn’t even realize how goddamn _annoying_ that is.

“You shouldn’t have kept your injuries from me. Last night.”

“Don’t – you don’t get to tell me what to do,” Alex says, real annoyance sparking this time, and he tries to shift out of George’s grip even as it tightens into an almost painful hold. Alex snarls before he can help it. “Just because I let you fuck me doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.”

George makes a noise of disgust and finally releases Alex from his grip, setting him carefully back on the ground. He seems to turn over several phrases in his mind, watching Alex with startlingly clear eyes before he finally says, “Get back to work.”

Alex does, turning and striding out of the bathroom before George can say anything else, though likely he wasn’t going to, anyways. 

Two hours later, George stops by his desk. “I owe you dinner.”

“No, you don’t.” Alex would know if he did; he’s scrupulous about ingoing and outgoing debts. 

“8 o’clock,” George says, shifting his hands into his pockets. His eyes track along the bruise on Alex’s face, then lower where Alex’s tie is knotted neatly around his throat, a heavy gaze that makes something shift in Alex’s gut. 

He looks around the office. The nearest cubicle is a solid fifteen feet away, but still. He looks down and feigns writing something in his calendar. 

“Maybe I have plans,” he says, voice pitched low. 

“Cancel them,” George says, simply. 

Alex almost laughs. “You’re unbelievable.”

George steps closer, hands still in his pockets. The light from the dying sun is skittering across the clean marble floor; it stops and catches on his watch and gets thrown back towards its origin point. George’s skin turns chestnut-burnished in the sunlight, though Alex doesn’t think he needs to know that Alex thinks that – thinks about how his skin turns mocha beautiful when the sunlight catches him in its hold. 

George says, “You don’t have plans.”

Alex glares up at him from beneath the dark flare of his lashes. George’s mouth twitches. They don’t say anything to each other. 

Finally, without looking away but with his voice pitched low enough not to carry, Alex says, “Actually I was thinking about letting this hot, older guy take me out to dinner and then back to his office. He’s got this wall of windows, you see, and he keeps promising to fuck me against them when the whole city below us is black and glittering.”

George does something approximating an almost smile. “8 o’clock. No promises.”

Alex feels his lip curl back. “Are there ever?”

George doesn’t respond – he’s already walking away. Probably didn’t even hear Alex, though as he rounds away he calls back over his shoulder, without looking, “Tonight.”

“We’ll see,” Alex says, pitching his voice into something cheerful and polite as it carries across the open space, “sir!” 

An hour later, he catches George between appointments. “Are you going to tell me where to make the reservation or should I just guess?”

George doesn’t look up from his phone as he strides off towards one of their four conference rooms. “I took care of it.”

“Right,” Alex says and returns to his desk.

The worst thing about fucking your boss, Alex thinks, is the predictability of it all. 

“Where’s your bike?” George leaves the Lexus idling as he steps out and rounds the car to open the door for Alex. 

“Sorry,” Alex says, ignoring George and opening the door for himself, sliding in and raising his voice loud enough for George to hear him as he circles back to the driver’s seat, “did you miss the part where I got into an accident last night? Maybe you forgot in between all the tossing me around you were doing earlier.” He pulls his snapback from his bag before flipping it into the backseat, cramming the hat on his head. 

George makes an annoyed noise, sliding into the driver’s side. “I didn’t toss you around.”

“That’s not what my shoulders had to say about being slammed against a bathroom wall.” He flicks a look over at George. “That fancy marble shit you got everywhere is fucking sturdy, you know.”

A muscle in George’s jaw ticks. He stays quiet. After a beat he says, “Have you considered the utility of a car over a bike?”

“You’re joking.” When George just checks the rearview and merges quietly into the garage’s exit lanes, Alex says, disbelievingly, “I’m sorry, did you think I was using a bike for the aesthetic continuity? Poor pathetic immigrant kid kicking around on his bike? Or am I that selfless about like the fucking planet or something? Shit.” He shakes his head. “What? You think I like it when these assholes deliberately try to run me off the road? Tell me to take my dirty faggot ass back home, this _is_ my home esos puta madres -”

“Alexander,” George says, with long-suffering gravitas, “language, please.”

“Sorry,” he says. He isn’t. He sniffs and looks towards the window, where the reflection of the city lights climbs at the glass as if it too is trying to get out of here, go somewhere further and faster and brighter.

“You could afford a car. Your salary –”

“Is not a topic up for conversation, right now, is what it is, okay.”

George nods. “Very well. I respect that. Nevertheless, perhaps it’s time for us to discuss a raise.”

“Yeah, well that time isn’t when I’m like an hour out from sucking your dick, George.”

George is silent, but he nods. The traffic inches forward. 

“Thank you so much,” Alex says in a voice shot through with sarcasm. He presses at the hinge of his jaw, where the bruise goes sickly yellow. “Are you going to shout at me if I pick the music?”

“Are you going to act like this all evening?”

Alex smiles, one eye tooth visible in the crooked space of his grin. He spreads his legs against the leather seat. “Only if you want me to.”

George flicks his glance over to Alex and then back on the road, but his hand snakes over and, without preamble, cups him between his legs.

“Aw, fuck,” Alex mutters, a hot blaze of heat flaring along his spine. It’s going to be like that tonight then. 

Once, early on, they’d fucked in the back of George’s Lexus; it had been uncomfortable and hot and George’s head kept hitting the roof until finally Alex had pushed him off and said, “Take me home and fuck me in a bed,” and George had, only they hadn’t made it to his bed, and Alex had come all over the beautiful mahogany of his foyer. 

Afterwards, George had stood, knees making a sound like a gunshot in the expensive room, and Alex had looked up at him from beneath his long lashes and murmured, “I think I made a mess,” before leaning down to lick his come off the clean gleaming floor with his tongue. 

It’d been the first time George had taken him home.

“You’re rarely concerned with doing what I want,” George murmurs, and he gives the package in his hands a gentle squeeze in admonishment. Alex spreads his legs wider until his knee hits the door. 

“That’s not true,” Alex says, pressing forward into the cup of George’s big palm. “Not true at all,” he says, even though they both know it, and he looks across at George from beneath his lashes again, out of the corner of his eye. “Could always skip dinner,” he offers.

George removes his hand and places it on his knee instead. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He doesn’t ask – not anymore, at least – how George knows. 

They’ve got this part figured out pretty well now, after 6 months of George trying to get him to eat and Alex demurring until George had asked, with patience blurred out by annoyance, if Alex had a problem. “Fuck,” Alex had laughed, “I know you’re not this stupid about the mechanics of anal sex, though I suppose the fact that it’s not your ass taking a cock every time that makes it – I dunno, a little less fucking salient for you, huh.”

George had sat back, a small smile on his lips. “If you wanted to top me, all you had to do was say so, Alexander.”

Alex had nearly screamed. “That is literally not what I was getting at.”

“So you don’t want to top me?”

“I – what?”

He’d fucked George that night; George on his back, legs spread around Alex’s thin hips, one hand fisting his cock and the other on the back of Alex’s neck, urging him towards orgasm like he was the one who needed coaxing. 

Since then, they’d mostly figured out a dance of sorts – if they were famished from not eating much between the hectic schedule George kept begrudgingly and Alex followed with fervor, George took him to one of the fancier restaurants in the city or just outside of it and they ate oysters and escargot and deconstructed meals that came on delicate tongs and clean, square plates until Alex asked if they could get the rest to go and George would signal for the check. Then they’d go back to George’s place or a hotel and fuck and sometimes afterwards George would order them hamburgers and steaks and they’d eat in their boxers or naked and George would look at him with his chin streaked in grease and Alex would throw a t-shirt at him to get him to stop staring. 

Once, after he’d had to send money to John to cover an ER bill and spent the next couple of days getting overdraft alerts from his bank, Alex had been so hungry he’d eaten until he was sick with it and George had rubbed his belly after he’d come out of the bathroom feeling shivery and gross all over. They’d fallen asleep like that. He’d woke in the middle of the night with George’s cold nose against his temple, his knuckles curving against his hip, and he’d dressed in the blue light of the alarm clock and called himself a cab home. 

Now, Alex says, “Ugh, fine.” He reaches forward and fiddles with the stereo. “Oysters?”

George puts his turn signal on and accelerates onto the highway. “Excellent choice,” he says, “my boy.”

On the stereo, Frank Ocean sings.

_Although you got beaucoup family_  
_You don't even got nobody being honest with you_  
_Breathe till I evaporated_  
_My whole body see through_

Halfway through dinner, George says, “I’ve mentioned before, I think, my home in Virginia.”

Alex swallows an oyster, licks his lips to chase the salty taste from them afterwards. George watches him, mouth very slightly parted, eyes flicking from the shape of Alex’s wet mouth up to his wide eyes. 

Alex fucking loves oysters. 

They smell like money. 

He hums his agreement. “Mount Vernon?” George nods. “Yeah, your fancy ass water-front property.” The first time he’d described it, he’d made it sound like a rustic cabin in the backwaters of Virginia’s idyllic rural country, some family relic half in shambles and rarely visited.

Alex had looked it up the next day and sent him a series of increasingly irate texts. Possibly he had used the words “deliberate subterfuge,” which, on reflection, felt a touch overkill. 

George nods and watches him select another oyster. He holds it up, waiting for George to finish his point. 

“Right,” George says. Alex slides his foot next to his under the table. George looks evenly at him. Alex swallows the oyster, lets it slide down his throat, then draws his thumb across his bottom lip, wiping his mouth clean. 

“In the fall, the foliage is – well, astonishing, really.” George takes a sip of chardonnay. “You should see it sometime.” 

“O-kay,” Alex says.” He waits a beat. George studies his wine glass. “Are you -”

“Yes,” George says, and finally looking up says, “Oh, damn.”

He’s not looking at Alex anymore though; instead, his eyes have slid to a point beyond Alex’s shoulder. His face has gone somehow more impassive than before and when Alex twists in his seat he sees why. 

“Shit.”

“Alexander,” George admonishes, quietly. 

“I don’t need a leash,” he reminds him.

“Mr. Jefferson,” George says, nodding in welcome to the figure steadily approaching their table. He doesn’t rise from his seat. 

“George!”

“Thomas,” George says. Jefferson reaches forward to shake his hand, then turns towards Alex.

“And Alexander,” Jefferson says, a stretched grin across his features. “Of course, can hardly find one without the other these days, as I understand it.”

“Mr. Hamilton,” Alexander corrects, returning his nod. “Mr. Jefferson.”

Jefferson’s grin stays fixed. He slides a look between them. “Well, this is cozy.”

“Hardly,” Alex says. 

George’s fingers spasm on the tablecloth. Jefferson’s smile ratchets impossibly wider. “Business dinner?” he says, as if hazarding a guess, and without waiting for their reply, continues, “Naturally, naturally, my dear secretary Sally and I enjoy a similar arrangement. Always work to plough through!” He looks back at George. “I understand completely.” 

“Do you?” George says politely.

Jefferson ignores him and slides his gaze back to Alex again. “Ah, my apologies. I forget myself. I do believe we’re foregoing the word secretary these days, aren’t we? Administrative assistant, I think, is that what you prefer to be called, Alex?

“It’s Mr. Hamilton.”

“Though, what with the differences in your age and professional stages, I’m sure George takes on a much more – hm, shall we say, a mentoring role for you, no, Alex? Like a teacher, or – might one even say, like a father?”

George stands. “Perhaps, given your experience fathering, Thomas, you can give me some pointers sometime. Colleague to colleague.”

Jefferson nods, almost an obsequious little bow. “Former colleague,” he corrects, still smiling that terrible smile. “I certainly don’t mean to be pedantic, but, well – you know how pesky HR policies are, I’m sure!” He looks positively gleeful. “Could ruin a man, couldn’t they?”

Jefferson is looking right at him. Alex doesn’t look away. 

“Well,” Jefferson says agreeably, “I hardly wish to spoil your evening with this kind of talk!” He shakes both of their hands again, reminds George that he’ll be sending some document back over to him for additional edits, notices their wine and chides them for not ordering whiskey, shakes their hands a third time, and ambles away. 

They stay for another 15 minutes, then George calls for the check. 

On the drive home, Alex says, “Look, can we just forget that even happened?”

George makes a strangled noise before he swallows. “Which part?” 

“All of it,” Alex says, running his hands through his hair so that the front of it sticks up in a birdish little fan like it did when he was a kid. George’s fingers clench on the steering wheel. They’ve been on the steering wheel the whole drive home, not once strayed to Alex’s lap. He blows air out through his teeth. Faintly, his jaw aches. “Just – we’re fine. Jefferson’s – a sack of gabbing shitsocks who wouldn’t know consent if it smacked him in the face and danced the foxtrot on his cockhead, so I certainly am not about to take any lectures from a man who – why are you laughing?”

George snorts. “I’m not,” he lies. “You -,” he doesn’t finish, shaking his head instead. 

Alex grins over at him. “Are brilliant? I know.” He sits back in his seat. “Seriously, though, I’m not going to take lectures from a man who can’t keep his hands off his disenfranchised fucking 20 year old maid slash servant slash babysitter slash I think they just make her do anything they don’t want to do, what a piece of shit, George, c’mon.”

George makes an assessing noise. “You’re not that much older than her, if you recall.”

“Yeah,” Alex says, “but spiritually I’m like 700.” _It’s why we work so well together,_ he doesn’t say. “Fuck, George -”

“Language,”

“Fudge, George,” Alex says, and tries not to get too much of a thrill out of the way George’s lip quirks, briefly. He looks out the window. “I haven’t been young since I was a kid and you know it.”

“I think now we were never twenty,” George murmurs. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” George says. His voice is low and soft, like it gets sometimes at night, when it’s just the two of them. He checks the mirror and flicks his turn signal on to take the next exit. “Idle chatter.”

“Also,” Alex says, “I’ve thought about sucking your dick like – every hour on the hour today, just – so you know. So like, there’s that, too.”

“Have you now,” George murmurs. 

“On the fucking hour, George.”

Sometimes they tumble in the doors already kissing. Sometimes they get inside and George shoves him up against the door and, chest heaving, tells him to take off all his clothes. Sometimes they fuck on the couch, or in the shower, or on the bed, or once, memorably, in his pool. Sometimes George makes them peppermint tea and they get halfway through a movie before Alex wonders what the fuck he’s doing there and slides his foot between George’s legs. 

Tonight, George’s Apple watch goes off with a notification as they’re walking inside and, checking it, he says, “I have to take care of this. Give me – an hour? Two tops.”

Alex drops his backpack on the kitchen island. “I can – I can help, with whatever it is.”

“You’re not on the clock,” George reminds him. He grabs a water bottle from the fridge and tosses it to Alex before grabbing a second one for himself. 

“Neither are you,” Alex points out, even though he knows it’s – technically – not really true. “Besides, I could be.”

George cuffs him, lightly, on the chin. “Go take a swim. Watch TV. Do whatever you want.” He runs his thumb along Alex’s lip. “Never work for free, son.”

Alex bites his lip; he can still feel the trace of George’s finger on it. “I’m not your son,” he says, but it’s halfhearted and George is already down the hall towards his office. 

He switches out his water bottle for a beer instead and drinks half of it in front of the TV before he says, out loud, “This is stupid,” and turns it off; instead picks his way towards the pool, stopping to poke at random shit along the way and drop bits and pieces of his clothing around the house, which he knows is inconvenient and will probably annoy George more than it will seduce him but he does it anyways, until he’s naked and leaving his tie draped over the mirror in George’s bedroom. 

He looks at himself for a minute, tries to see what George sees – skinny Latino boy, bordering on short though he prefers to think of himself as “not tall” instead; dark hair that grows straight except when he keeps it long and he doesn’t, though he’s thought about growing it out, wonders how George would feel if he wore it long enough to pull back into a pony; wonders if it would annoy him to have his secretary with hair that long or if he’d like it, if he’d wrap it around his fingers when he was fucking him. 

He runs his fingers down the line of hair on his belly, through his pubic hair that he keeps trimmed short and lower, where the skin goes smooth ‘cause he gets it waxed every couple of weeks, even though he knows it shows his vanity. Whatever. Anyone getting close enough to see that he waxes his asshole already knows he’s a vain little shit, and besides lately the only person that’s been is - 

He sniffs and turns away from the mirror. 

He slides the patio doors open and steps out towards the pool – which, calling it is a pool is, frankly, an understatement. George lives in the penthouse of a luxury high rise, and his patio opens onto an almost otherworldly space made of gleaming glass and expensive black stone with an infinity pool that affords a view of the whole city, lit up and glimmering under the night sky. 

He loves swimming, has since he was a kid and his mom would take him down to the beach in the evenings after she’d get off work or before second shift, and she’d sit in the sand and watch him run back and forth in the shallow, evening tide. Later, when she started getting sick, he’d go down by himself and walk along the shore until he’d get close enough to the fishing wharfs, where he’d watch the men loading and unloading at the docks; in the summers, their bronze backs glistened like pennies in the sunshine and Alexander wondered if he licked them if they’d taste like pennies too – the kind of dull sour that deepens at the back of your throat and makes you want more of it. 

He does laps until he’s panting and his thighs are aching and then he kicks his feet up and lets himself float, watching the night sky and turning in its gyre until he feels faintly sick and drops under, lets the water fill up his vision again. 

When he surfaces, George is there, sitting on the edge of the pool. He’s wearing the skimpiest swim shorts Alex has ever seen; black, rippling over his strong thighs. His broad chest is bare, and his skin looks almost blue in the moonlight. 

Alex swims over to him, grinning, wet all over and mouth hungry for him. “These are more indecent than if you just went naked, you realize,” he says, and punctuates it by sliding the tips of his fingers under the hem of each thigh. George flexes under his touch. “Why not just go naked?”

George hums. “I was mistakenly under the assumption that you were swimming,” he says, moving his leg forward until Alex gets the hint, and without thinking, mounts it. George makes a satisfied noise - a low, rumbly sound in his chest - and Alex goes hot when he realizes what he’s done. Humping his leg like a dog. Like his bitch. George continues, “instead of waging a full-scale seduction operation, my boy.” 

“Don’t call me that,” Alex says, voice firm, though he undercuts himself by dropping his mouth to suck a hot kiss on the top of George’s thigh, pushing the material up his leg even further. 

George says nothing, only threads his fingers through Alex’s wet hair. 

“Do you want me to come in?” he asks, after a few moments have passed. Alex hasn’t moved his head from George’s lap. “Or do you want to get out?”

Alex swallows. It’s too early in the night for him to be getting like this – pliant and dozy and fucked out. He hasn’t even been fucked yet. He straightens and slides his hands up George’s body, over his hips and along the length of his chest, until he’s palming at his biceps. He swallows again. “Wherever I can sit on your dick is fine by me, how about,” he says, finally, lip curling into a smirk. 

George looks at him. Then his gaze flicks past Alex’s shoulder, out over the city skyline. He pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and, releasing it, eyes flicking back over to Alex’s face, says easily, “In that case – out. I wanna see you bend over for it, boy.”

In the bedroom, he reaches for George, but George puts a hand on his chest, slides it up towards his throat and says, “I thought you were going to work for it?”

Alex sniffs. “Fuck, I been working for it, big guy.” He tugs away before George can respond and turns around so George can watch his ass as he walks down the hallway, back towards the kitchen. 

He grabs a second beer, heart going too fast and taking a sip before he feels George slide up behind him, palming his bare ass. With the other hand, he takes the bottle from Alex’s grip. “Swallow,” he directs, and Alex does, watching him, the beer fizzing in the back of his throat. 

The bottle leaves his fingers wet and shiny. George takes a sip without breaking eye contact, then brings his palm down hard on Alex’s ass, drawing a shiny, wet moan from him to match his shiny, wet fingers. 

“If you want more,” George says, “you’ll have to ask for it,” and Alex isn’t sure if he means his beer or his hand, but he does and he will. 

“Yes, sir,” he says, and George smirks, eyes soft. 

“Not quite there yet, then, hmm?”

Alex goes hot all over. He turns away, starts to walk towards the living room, hips swaying. George follows. He wonders if he could get him to follow him into every room in this house. 

“You keep telling me you want me to work for it, but you’re not letting me,” he says, and he pushes at George’s chest until he sits back on the leather sofa, Alex dropping automatically between his broad, spread thighs, “do the work.”

George’s eyes glitter. 

Alex looks at the beer in his palm. “Give me a sip,” he says. 

“Open your mouth.” George makes that noise again – the rumbly, happy one. “So obedient,” he says, and Alex feels something sharp in the back of his throat, wets his bottom lip with his tongue, waiting for it - but George raises the bottle to his own mouth. Takes a swallow. 

Alex makes a hurt noise, glaring from beneath his lashes. He doesn’t close his mouth. He doesn’t want to close his mouth.

George leans forward and tips his chin up with his finger, then spits the beer from his mouth into Alex’s waiting one. 

Alex makes a noise. The noise is wet and garbled and shot through with desire. He feels -

George tips his chin closed. “Swallow,” he says, again, and Alex does, not looking away. 

“Open,” George directs. 

Alex opens. He feels unraveled. 

This time, George doesn’t take a sip from the bottle but he leans forward anyway and spits into Alex’s mouth. It hits the back of his tongue, wet and unfamiliar. He swallows again, swallows George’s spit, because that’s his – man, that’s his – he’ll do - 

“I’ll do anything you want,” he says, “in case that wasn’t fucking clear at this point.”

George rubs his cheek, then pats it with enough force that Alex feels the deep ache of the bruise go sharp and whip-like. “Fuck,” he hisses, and George spits in his mouth again. Some of it gets on his cheek, and he turns his face into George’s palm, not to rub it off but to rub it _in._

“I liked that,” Alex says, as if his mewling and whining weren’t obvious. “You can – you can do that to me at work, if you want, make me come into your office and drink your spit, lick your come up –”

He stops talking when George puts his palm over his mouth. 

George leans back, takes his hand away one breath at a time. He lets Alex look him all over, from the flex of his broad chest to how his cock is a thick, hot bulge in his shorts, and then says, voice low, “Show me that ass.”

“Yeah,” Alex breathes, “I – will,” he says, turning around and dropping to his elbows, “I wanna fucking show you exactly where I want it, show you where your dick belongs,” he says and pushes his ass up, arching his back and shaking his hips a little. He drops to his chest, cheek scraping against the rug, and tries to spread his legs further but the space is too small and George is unyielding and solid and doesn’t move to accommodate the width of his knees. 

“C’mon, son,” George says, and his voice has just the edge of – something to it, Alex isn’t sure – 

“Don’t call me that,” he hisses, and locks his teeth around one knuckle. He arches his back and shakes his ass again, rolling his hips in simulation of a fuck. “That’s how I’d do it,” he breathes out, “That’s how I’d back up on your dick, you wouldn’t have to do any of the work,” he says, and his mouth is so goddamn wet around his knuckle, drool already down his chin. He hears the sound of a waistband being pushed aside. “Fuck, are you jerking yourself?” He sucks in a wet breath at the sound of George stroking his cock, watching him shake his ass and show off his asshole. “You just want to give it to me, don’t you, want to feed that thick cock right up into me, huh?”

George sucks in a breath. “Alexander.”

“C’mon -,” he bites his tongue and turns his head so his face is bruise-side down. When George’s palm comes down on his ass, right over his hole, the force of it jogs his face against the carpet. “Shit,” he slurs. 

“Are you drooling on my carpet, baby?” George croons, voice like velvet, voice like something deep and black and expensive, and with his hand down there he starts playing with Alex’s ass, running his fingers over the hot curl of his hole. “Can’t stand not having something in your mouth, huh?” 

“Put it in me,” Alex says hotly, saliva on his lips and chin from where he’s been sucking on his knuckle, and George does, leans over and shoves two thick fingers roughly into his mouth, knocking his hand away from his mouth, and Alex knows - _knows_ \- those were the same fingers he just had on his ass and he groans around them, around the faint taste of himself on George’s hands. 

George fucks his mouth with his fingers – sharp, deep thrusts that have Alex’s eyes rolling into the back of his head - before he removes them and puts them back – wet and slick – against his entrance. “This where you want it?”

“You know it is, you know I always want it, I’m such a little bitch for it, just want to take your fucking dick all the time -,” he says, and cuts his teeth on his knuckle around the rest of his words. 

“All the time what,” George says, voice roughened. He works at Alex’s hole, drawing the pads of his fingers against the muscle, smearing the slickness of his saliva around in deliberate circles. 

Alex swallows. “All the time, I want your dick, fuck – you know it, you know it’s true.” It comes out stilted. He rolls his forehead on the carpet and breathes out, “Come _on_.”

“Open up for me then,” George says, and he nudges Alex forward with one broad palm on his backside, sliding off the couch to kneel behind him, a little to the side, positioned so that he can keep his fingers tucked up between Alex’s ass cheeks and rub his stubbled jaw along Alex’s bare shoulder at the same time. “Open it up for me,” George repeats, softer though no less demanding.

“I am,” Alex, says hotly, tilting his hips back and willing his ass to relax around the petting tip of George’s finger. “I want it, so bad,” he pants, and squeezes his eyes shut when George kisses his shoulder. 

“I don’t think you do,” George says, rubbing at his hole still with insistent fingers. “Look at you,” and he brings his palm down on Alex’s ass again, a sharp crack that crawls up Alex’s spine. 

“Fuck you, if I had a pussy I’d be dripping,” Alex bites back, and he shoves one arm back and grabs at his cheek, holding his ass open. “Please,” he gasps, “c’mon, please – I.”

“Flare it,” George says, and Alex takes a breath, concentrating, until he can get the muscles in his ass to tighten and then release, and once he does, opening himself up, asshole gasping for it, George breathes, “Good boy,” and drops a globule of spit right into his opened entrance. He chases it with his broad tongue and pushes it inside of Alex, and it’s not until he’s done that to his satisfaction, pointing his tongue and fucking it through the tight ring of muscle, that he says, “You can relax now,” and Alex does, every muscle from his thighs to his flanks quivering. His chest is heaving. 

“That was good,” George says, softly, running a hand along Alex’s trembling back. “Now, do it again,” he says, and Alex chokes. 

He doesn’t know if he _can_, body tense and quivering and waiting to collapse, but when George tells him again, “Flare it,” he does, relaxing and tensing over and over again as George pushes his spit inside of him with his tongue, and then the tip of his finger, and then the full slide of his finger and another inside of him, until he’s sobbing, eyes wet, saliva down his chin, George working two fingers inside of him, the fuck of it too tight still, until his eyes are rolling up into the back of his head and he breathes out – 

“Oh, _please_,” and doesn’t exactly know what he’s begging for. 

“Please, what?” 

“Please, please,” he spits, grinding his ass back on George’s fingers.

“Get my cock wet,” George says, and Alex can hear the urgency in his voice now, and he scrambles to comply, turning around on his hands and knees and opening his throat to let it flow over George’s cock without preamble, shoving his face down on it until he can feel the sticky saliva from the back of his throat coating George’s cock and he pulls back, drags his hand along George’s wet shaft, smearing the slick around, and saying, “Is that good? I know it’s good, I know it’s enough, you have to -.”

“Have to what, Alexander?” Alex almost laughs. His cock is so hard he’s already leaking with it, Alex can taste it on his tongue, and he’s still – fuck. _Unrelenting._ George touches the back of his neck. “What is it you need from me, my boy?”

He can’t – he cannot _breathe_. 

“Put it in me, let me have it,” he says, scrambling to turn around again and rub his ass over the wet slide of George’s shaft. “Fuck it up into me, you know I can’t shut up until you’re –”

“Here?” He feels George rub the wet head of his dick along his wet asshole. Maybe he does have a pussy, with how messy everything is right now, slick and sticky from spit. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, trying to sink back on it, feeling the first breach of his ass flaring around the head, and George holds him there, lets him have just the tip while Alex’s heart is in his throat, while heat is roaring strange and unbidden in his ears. 

“Please,” he says, and he knows his face is filthy, knows his eyes look wet and red, “please, let me have the rest of it, I can – I can be good and take it, you know, I can, you know I’m good for you -”

“Who are you good for, Alexander?”

“Please,” he breathes, and feels George’s hands on his hips, holding him still on the blunt, fat head of his cock. 

George’s breath is hot on the side of his throat, the edge of his jaw. “Alexander, my boy. You can say it. You know you can say it.” He slides his hand from Alex’s hip and over to his belly, holding him all pressed up against the broad width of George and Alex feels _tiny_, and – he feels – and. He feels – 

He shakes his head. George kisses him, just below his ear. “Whose cock do you want to fuck you, my boy, whose cock is it that you want to fall back on and let take you and take you until you belong only to me?”

Alex moans, a terrible noise caught behind his teeth. “Give it to me,” he breathes, arching back to kiss George, who meets him just as sloppy and artless, all spit and chin and more than enough teeth and when George holds him there, against his mouth, one hand on the back of his head and says, “Say it,” with every certainty that he will, Alex makes a noise like a trapped animal and breathes out, 

“You – yours – fuck, Daddy, please, _Daddy_, give it to me,” and George groans, a noise made of all edges, and shoves Alex back onto his dick, takes him all the way. 

“Fuck,” Alex sobs, shaking, his spine arched in breathless pleasure, George’s cock fitting up into him like he was made for it. 

“Take it, baby,” George breathes, curling close and deep, letting Alex shake through the first stretch of it all the way up inside of him.

“Shit,” Alex says, blinking hard. When George starts to kiss the line of his shoulders, not moving inside of him, just _there_, he reaches back between them with one arm and presses George away a little, gets him to lean back against the couch. “You want me to ride it?” he asks, looking back over his shoulder, hands on his thighs as he starts to move a little faster, a little deeper, rolling his hips and drawing George’s cock into his ass, “You want me to bounce on it,” he says, voice stretched raw, and of course now that he’s said it he can’t stop saying it. “You want me to make you come, Daddy?”

George makes a choked sound and runs his hand down the long arch of Alex’s back, palming the base of his spine and helping him move back and forth on it. “Yeah,” he breathes, “that feels,” audibly he swallows and then tucks in closer again, fitting his mouth below Alex’s ear. “Baby feels so good on my cock.”

“Fuck,” Alex says, again, the word caught on his teeth, hips stuttering. “Don’t -,” he says, but doesn’t know what he was going to say next, anyways. He arches his back and presses both palms to George’s hips, letting his head tilt back, letting everything narrow to the space where he’s sliding back and forth on the long stretch of George’s cock, full up with it. 

“Take my arms, hold my arms back,” he says, and George makes a low noise and slides his hands up the length of Alex’s forearms to grip him around the bend of his elbow where the skin goes soft and vulnerable. 

“We can go slow.”

“I don’t want to go slow,” he spits back, lowering himself until he’s got the whole thick length of George’s cock inside of him and he can grind on it, too deep for him to do anything but pant. “I thought you were going to give me what I want?” he breathes, in between the moan that George fucks out of him with one sharp tilt of his hips forward. 

There’s a beat before George says, “Fine,” in a way that Alex can’t decipher. “Hold yourself up,” he directs, and his voice sounds familiar again. 

“That’s more like it,” Alex says, but it’s cut off with a sharp cry as George starts to piston his hips forward, the fuck of it knocking the breath out of Alex. 

“Yes,” he hisses, “shit,” he says, and arms still held fast in George’s grip, twists his neck to lunge at George’s mouth and kiss him, George’s cock working in him at a brutal pace. “That’s it,” he breathes, words caught low in the space between their mouths. “I fucking love it, I love being your little bitch boy, you know I do, you know it.”

George pulls back enough to look at him, eyes dark and impassive. Finally, he says, “Say it again.”

Alex swallows. He feels his lip curl up. George is fucking him hard enough that his tongue feels lost in his mouth. Finally, he says, “I love taking it for you like a little bitch.”

George kisses him with too much teeth. When he pulls back, he’s not looking at Alex. He reaches between Alex’s legs to touch his cock, finally, fingers wrapping into a fist around his dick. “Not that.”

Alex snorts. He wants to fucking come, is chasing the fuck of George’s dick and the hump of his fist curled loosely around his cock. “Why don’t you make me say it, okay?”

“Fine,” George says again, and breathing heavy, tips him forward onto the carpet and clambers up behind him, stretched out over the length of Alex’s back and mounting him.

“Shit,” Alex whines, feeling the fuck of it in his goddamn throat. “That’s too much, too much, Daddy, you’re too big for me, I can’t -,” he whines, pushing back for it, fisting his cock where it’s slick at the tip. He can feel his orgasm curling hot and heavy in his belly, like something he’s barreling towards and couldn’t stop for even if he wanted to.

“Be good for it,” George says, voice husked over. “Be good for your Daddy.”

“Shit,” Alex slurs out, slapping his palm on the carpet, digging his nails into the thick of it while he fucks back as furiously as George is thrusting into him. “You gonna make me come? Papi, you gonna make your baby boy come?" he bites out and he can feel it in his fingers and in his ribs and behind his teeth and in the backs of his knees and George breathes in his ear, “Be good and come for your Daddy,” and he sobs out, “I am, I _am_,” and comes like a livewire, back an electric arch as he shoots all over the rug below him, some Persian thousand-dollar monstrosity, no doubt, and through the white noise rush of his heartbeat in his ears he can hear George hissing, “Yes,” once softly and then going still and silent as he comes, fucked all the way deep up inside of Alex. 

After a moment, he feels the press of George’s lips against the place where his bruise goes sickly yellow. He swallows. Faintly, he hears the low thrum of a plane overhead, distant and far off.

“You did so well,” George mutters, kissing open-mouthed at the side of his face, the hinge of his jaw. “So well, son.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. He gives a shaky laugh. “Damn.” He feels wrung out, like after too many hours awake in the middle of the night. Another laugh finds its way out his throat and it sounds – weird. He sounds weird. He clears his throat. “We’re getting come like – all over your rug. I should -,” he rolls his shoulder where George kisses it. “I should shower.”

“It’s alright,” George says, voice soft. “Take your time. There isn’t any rush.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “Well some of us have rug burn on like – everywhere.” Jesus. What is wrong with his mouth. 

There’s a beat and then George says, “Ah,” and, “my apologies,” and, “let me,” and then he’s pulling out, one hand on Alex’s flank stroking soothingly as he does it. 

“No problem,” he says, and leverages himself up – only, his knee buckles halfway through to standing and George has to catch him. 

“Alright?”

“Shit,” Alex laughs. “Yeah, I’m – uh. Fine. Just. I’m fine.” 

“You’re shaking.”

“Too much coffee today.” George looks at him. “Shit, well. Next time you promise to fuck me until I can’t walk, I’ll know you’re good for it.” Alex finally pushes himself to standing, drawing himself away from George’s arms. He is trembling, knees still threatening to drop him, but he doesn’t. Just puts one foot in front of the other, then realizes he’s turning in circles and makes himself stop. 

“Would you like to take a bath?”

“Nah. Shower’s good.” George’s come is dripping down his thighs. He looks down at the rug. “Shit, your carpet is like – you’re gonna have to get that like professionally cleaned.”

“Alexander.”

_Daddy,_ he thinks.

He grins, shark-like. Puts his hands on George’s chest and leans up to kiss him. “Good fuck, big guy.” 

In the kitchen, George is staring at his phone. Alex doesn’t say anything, just stands there dripping a little on the tile. He tugs the t-shirt he pulled from George’s bureau where it’s hanging – too-big – off his collarbones and tries to figure out if he’s hungry enough to badger George into ordering them food. There’s a tumbler of dark rum at George’s elbow, neat. 

Finally, George does look up. “I called you a -,” he starts, and then pauses, tongue on his bottom lip. Alex drags his fingers through his still damp hair, blows air out through his teeth. “Are you staying over?”

Alex looks at him. “It’s like. One o’clock in the morning.”

George’s face is impassive. “Alright.” 

Once they’d fucked all night after a gala event that had gone until at least 2am and Alex had called for a cab at five in the morning, waiting outside in the pre-dawn chill with his breath fogging glassy around him. 

“Cool.” He looks around. The kitchen is mostly dark; George has got this fancy low-lighting smart shit that adjusts over the course of the day, so it’s all soft and blue-toned now. He threw on basketball shorts and a t-shirt while Alex was in the shower, and his feet are bare, thighs straining at the sleek material as he sits, knees spread, on the high-backed island stool. “You stayin’ up or -?”

“C’mere.”

“What?” He’s already moving though, the part of him that’s not connected to his mouth that wants to do exactly as George tells him, has since George hired him and said, “You’ll be showing up in your best suit, tomorrow, I’m sure,” and he’d blown through the rest of his savings to pick one up on the way home from his interview and George had still sent it out for tailoring anyways by the second week they were working together. He steps in close until George winds an arm around his flank. “You trying to start round two? ‘Cause I’m not sure you’ve got it in you, big guy -”

“Stop talking.”

Alex grins, sliding between George’s knees and letting George heft him onto the countertop with both hands. “Make me, fucker.”

George’s mouth twitches. “Try this.” He pushes the tumbler into Alex’s hands. 

Alex swallows. “What, not gonna spit it in my mouth again?”

George looks at him, eyes dark, face impassive. “I could, if you wanted to.”

Alex’s knee twitches. George can feel it, he’s sure, tucked in as close as they are right now. “Do it,” he says, lifting his chin. 

George takes a sip of the rum, not looking away from Alex, and after a moment leans forward and transfers the liquid smoothly into Alex’s waiting mouth. Alex swallows. He doesn’t close his eyes.

“It’s good,” he says, but George is already kissing him, fingers gentle on the side of his face. 

When he pulls away, he says, “Gonna take you to bed now,” and in the morning Alex will feel like the world’s biggest fool but for now he wraps his legs around George’s hips and lets him do just that.

**Author's Note:**

> George quotes Philip Levine's [You Can Have It](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/philip_levine/poems/19019) when he refers to the line, "I think now we were never twenty," which I like to think is a poem George would have a special affinity for if he were alive today. 
> 
> You can find me yelling about Hamilton/Turn/Historical RPF/my latent crush on George Washington on my [tumblr](silkcoeur.tumblr.com) if that's the sort of thing you're into.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Comments are treasured. <3


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